# Mistakes on Pokemon Sites.



## Yarnchu (Dec 5, 2008)

Before I start, let me mention that this is for the generaly truthful and well meaning fan sites like Bulbapedia and Serebii. So no, don't just find a random fan site with all these problems, but look for the informative ones.

Well, Bulbapedia's Deoxys page has some mis-information.



> Originally, all of Deoxys's different "formes" were thought to be spelled as "form." However, after Giratina's Origin Forme was revealed, fans went back to check Pokémon.com, and the Official Emerald Players guide (published in 2005) to find that "forme" has in fact always been the official spelling.


Now I can't find my Emerald guide to confirm that it was spelled "forme" there, but in my Nintendo Power(not a crappy Prima guide) Firered and Leafgreen guide, it is spelled "form", not "forme", which means that is not how it always been.

Deoxys Trivia


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## firepoke4ever (Dec 6, 2008)

Hey... I have that crappy Prima Emerald guide. I can't find it right now, though. I'll check if I do find it.


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## Mad MOAI (Dec 6, 2008)

Well, LegendaryPokemon.net has a bunch of improper Japanese names, for example they often replace "ru" or "ra" with "l" or "la" respectively. This leads to names such as "Latios" for Latios, when it's actually "Rateiosu."


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## nothing to see here (Dec 8, 2008)

Actually... Japanese Pokémon names are written in katakana, so the "proper Japanese" name of Latios would be "ラティオス".  If you're going to translate them into the English alphabet, you might as well go ahead and spell them the way they're supposed to be spelled in English (Latios, not "Rateiosu".)


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## shadow_lugia (Dec 8, 2008)

I remember one from Serebii.

On the old Pokemon of the Week page for Tangela, it tells you to put Synthesis in a battle moveset.
TANGELA DON'T LEARN SYNTHESIS :o
I'm not even going to try bothering to find all the typos on there...


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## Jdrawer (Dec 8, 2008)

On Pokemon.com (not Serebii or Bulbapedia but, POKEMON.com) they have the wrong evolution lines for lots of the stand alone pokemon who received evos in Sinnoh. For example, for Nosepass, it should say : Nosepass>Probopass. But it just says Nosepass. Unless you click on Probopass's evo page, it says Nosepass>Probopass. Same for II gen stand alones like Yanma.


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## Abwayax (Dec 9, 2008)

superyoshi888 said:


> Before I start, let me mention that this is for the generaly truthful and well meaning fan sites like Bulbapedia and Serebii. So no, don't just find a random fan site with all these problems, but look for the informative ones.
> 
> Well, Bulbapedia's Deoxys page has some mis-information.
> 
> ...


you know instead of pointing it out here you could just, erm, post it at Bulbagarden? Or maybe, since you can actually do this, go fix it yourself?

FYI, "Official Emerald Players Guide" refers to the Nintendo guide, not Prima's (pub. 2005), so it succeeds the FireRed/LeafGreen guide (pub. 2004). I'll add that into the article.


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## Yarnchu (Dec 9, 2008)

Number 100 said:


> you know instead of pointing it out here you could just, erm, post it at Bulbagarden? Or maybe, since you can actually do this, go fix it yourself?
> 
> FYI, "Official Emerald Players Guide" refers to the Nintendo guide, not Prima's (pub. 2005), so it precedes the FireRed/LeafGreen guide (pub. 2004). I'll add that into the article.


I know quite well what it means. If you reread what I said, I stated that my Firered/Leafgreen guide was the official one and not the one released by Prima. I also have said official Emerald guide but it has disappeared, so I can't verify whether it was spelled "forme" there or if it was "form" like in the FR/LG guide. I also don't have an acount at Bulbagarden so I can't really do anything about, and making one to mention such a simple thing is just plain silly. Anyways, the point of this topic was to point out any error on a reliable pokemon website.

EDIT: Actually, precedes means to come before, so its the FR/LG guide that precedes the Emerald guide, not the other way around.


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## Abwayax (Dec 9, 2008)

My bad, I meant succeeds.

I opened up a discussion here about it.


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## ultraviolet (Dec 9, 2008)

PK's & Eevee's fake Skymin forme, anyone?

(That was hilarious!)


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## Alxprit (Dec 9, 2008)

Saying "Skymin" means you're referring to its Sky forme; you don't have to say "Skymin forme".


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## Ice tiger (Dec 10, 2008)

Charmeleon evolves into Charmeleon! :/ Seriously.


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## Yarnchu (Dec 10, 2008)

Number 100 said:


> My bad, I meant succeeds.
> 
> I opened up a discussion here about it.


So you're Abwayax? I didn't think that you came to TCoD's forums. Yeah, I actually saw that yesterday when I decided to look it up. Should I scan the page?


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## Abwayax (Dec 10, 2008)

superyoshi888 said:


> So you're Abwayax? I didn't think that you came to TCoD's forums.


It's in my signature, unless you have those disabled.



Ice tiger said:


> Charmeleon evolves into Charmeleon! :/ Seriously.


On what site was this mistake on?


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## ultraviolet (Dec 10, 2008)

> Saying "Skymin" means you're referring to its Sky forme; you don't have to say "Skymin forme".


Guess I'm too old for this sort of thing. Kids these days... -grumble-


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## Invader Palkia (Dec 10, 2008)

http://www.pokemonelite2000.com/diamondpearl.html

"Pokemon Diamond is represented by Dialga (with the power over space), and Pokemon Pearl is represented by Palkia (with the power over time)."

I remember pointing that out on Serebii ages ago, lol xD


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## Yarnchu (Dec 10, 2008)

Number 100 said:


> It's in my signature, unless you have those disabled.


Oh...well, I don't tend to read signatures. Guess I should've noticed...


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## Autumn (Dec 11, 2008)

I could probably list everything wrong with Serebii's Mystery Dungeon section, but there's too many. @_@ Just go check it out or something if you play MD.


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## Invader Palkia (Dec 11, 2008)

Serebii usually makes their guides before the English version comes out, and doesn't go to edit them after it does.

Kinda annoying, but meh.


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## Butterfree (Dec 11, 2008)

Cryptica said:


> Well, LegendaryPokemon.net has a bunch of improper Japanese names, for example they often replace "ru" or "ra" with "l" or "la" respectively. This leads to names such as "Latios" for Latios, when it's actually "Rateiosu."


The _intended_ Japanese name is "Latios"; it's the name you'll find, for instance, on any official Japanese Latios merchandise that writes the name with the Latin alphabet, because the name is based on Latin (_lateo_ meaning _hidden_, with the -os ending to indicate masculinity). Strictly, that makes it the "correct" Japanese name. Similarly, Vaporeon's Japanese name is officially intended to be "Showers", for instance, based on an English word.

In the game, however, they write the names in Katakana, which means they get slightly distorted by the limitations of that writing system: they have no "la", so they must write "ra"; they have no "ti" (only "chi") so they must write "te i" with a _small_ i character (note that it is small; that's transliterated as "ti" and not as "tei" even when romanizing directly, the small i existing precisely to approximate more accurate transliteration of syllables like "ti"); they have no "s", so they must write "su". If you want to transliterate the Katakana directly, you'll get "Ratiosu", but that's just the closest Japanese approximation of the intended "Latios", similar to how "hanbaagaa" is the closest Japanese approximation of the intended "hamburger".

Anyway, I believe Serebii still has a mathematical error in the page explaining IVs (and explains the obviously incorrect result with "but these formulas are not perfect, so don't mind that!"), as well as claiming that IVs are the biggest influence upon a Pokémon's stats and that an 80-point stat difference between two Salamence can be the result of IVs (blatantly impossible).


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## Dragon (Dec 11, 2008)

Invader Palkia said:


> Serebii *always* makes their guides before the English version comes out, and doesn't go to edit them after it does.
> 
> Kinda annoying, but meh.


I fixed it for you.


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## Abwayax (Dec 12, 2008)

Number 100 said:


> My bad, I meant succeeds.
> 
> I opened up a discussion here about it.


No one responded to me on that talk page in 2 days (seems my innate ability to kill threads follows me around the internet ><), so I'm going to make the actual edit now.


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## ultraviolet (Dec 12, 2008)

Why doesn't Serebii ever fix his errors? o.O


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## Butterfree (Dec 12, 2008)

*shrug* I don't think he really cares. :/ He just wants to be the first with everything.


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## Abwayax (Dec 13, 2008)

I pity the fool who still uses serebii.net as a source of information


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## Yarnchu (Dec 13, 2008)

I only go to it for any news, but Bulbapedia is usually better in that catagory too.


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## Mad MOAI (Dec 20, 2008)

Sorry to, er, upset you, Butterfree, but there is no "L" in the Japanese language.

BACK ON TOPIC, there's a website I go to that says Zigzagoon's base attack is 3041, and Honchkrow's is over 5,000, if I remember correctly.


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## Butterfree (Dec 20, 2008)

Cryptica said:


> Sorry to, er, upset you, Butterfree, but there is no "L" in the Japanese language.


v.v Does nobody understand a word I say? Christ, you're the second person I've been trying to explain this to in the past couple of weeks and it seems to be impossible to get through anyone's skull.

*The fact there is no L in the Japanese language is precisely the point.*

(Well, it is technically inaccurate to say that; the "r" sound in Japanese is actually kind of midway between L and R as we know them, and if a Japanese person says something that sounds like "ra" and you ask them to repeat it, it might as well sound more like "la" when they do. There is just no meaningful difference between the sounds in Japanese. But back to the point.)

The names of Latios and Latias are derived from *Latin*, not Japanese. *Latin* has an L. *Latin* is perfectly capable of just having the syllable "ti" and ending a word in an S.

*In order to write these LATIN names, "Latios" and "Latias", in Japanese, the game creators had to approximate them as far as possible using the syllables that exist in Japanese, rendering them as ラティオス and ラティアス.*

Those approximations, _without_ accounting for the fact that they are just approximations of words written with the Latin alphabet to begin with, would be transcribed with our alphabet as "Ratiosu" and "Ratiasu". However, *because the actual intended names are LATIN, not Japanese, and are written with the Latin alphabet as "Latios" and "Latias", those are the official romanizations of the Japanese names*.

*If you walked up to an employee of Game Freak, showed him a picture of Latios and asked him to write its Japanese name with our alphabet, he would write "Latios", not "Ratiosu".*


Let's take a parallel example if you still don't get it. Japanese uses the ENGLISH word "hamburger" as a loan word. Being an ENGLISH word, it is correctly written with the Latin alphabet, as "hamburger"; however, for the purposes of using it in Japanese, it has to be approximated using syllables that exist in Japanese, as ハンバーガー. _Without_ accounting for the fact that "hamburger" is an English word, originally written with the Latin alphabet, you would transcribe this as "hanbaagaa".

"Hanbaagaa" is just an attempt to write "hamburger" with an alphabet that can't write it properly. If you're writing in the Latin alphabet anyway, and are aware that it's supposed to be "hamburger", why on earth would you insist that the Japanese word for a hamburger is not "hamburger"? Similarly, "Ratiosu" is just an attempt to write "Latios" with an alphabet that can't write it properly, and if one of them is more correct to use, it is "Latios", since *that is the official romanization of the name*. Japanese Pokémon merchandise sometimes writes Japanese Pokémon names with the Latin alphabet, and then it will write "Ebiwalar" on a Hitmonchan wallpaper, and "Showers" on a Vaporeon figurine, and yes, "Latios" on a Latios plushie.

I don't know how I can possibly make myself clearer than this.


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## GorMcCobb (Dec 21, 2008)

I don't know about mistakes on pokemon sites, but I was watching pokemon. It was the hoen series. For the comersials they did this quiz thing. They showed a silouette of a Seviper and asked "What does this pokemon evolve from?" There I thought it was a trick question. The choices were; Mightiena, Arboc and Nincada... after commercials they said Arboc. That's why I don't watch the pokemon TV show regularly anymore.


Butterfree... coool it. Some people don't know the Japanese language and the nuanses... But I do agree with what you say. I've been taking Japanese since grade 8.


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## Dragon (Dec 22, 2008)

Cryptica said:


> BACK ON TOPIC, there's a website I go to that says Zigzagoon's base attack is 3041, and Honchkrow's is over 5,000, if I remember correctly.


IT'S OVER FIVE THOUSAND!!!!11!!!

Anyways, I remember seeing somewhere that Metapod evolves into Caterpie. There were some other evolution mistakes too...


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## Yarnchu (Dec 22, 2008)

Well, since Butterfree went a little off topic with the whole Japanese/Latin language thing, I thought about something. Kakuna, Nidoran, Nidorina, and Nidorino can all be spelled using Japanese symbols, so I'm guessing they were directly translated, right? What exactly do they mean or where are the names derived from? Just a little curious.

BTW they aren't the only ones, just something I noticed while playing Hey You Pikachu earlier.


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## Cryssie (Dec 22, 2008)

Kakuna is probably just a corruption of the word "cocoon".

That the names of some of the Pokémon in the Nidoran line can be spelt as-is with Japanese syllables may just be a coincidence. Looking around a bit, there are various suggestions as to the origins of the names...

Whoever wrote Nidorino's 'dex page on Gengar and Haunter's Pokémon Dungeon reckons it may have some relation "rhino", what with being a tough-skinned, horned, quadrupedal beastie and all.

Various ideas under the trivia section of Nidoran's page on Bulbapedia include:

Relation to the English word "needle" (it is the "Poison Pin" Pokémon, after all), bearing in mind the lack of distinction between R and L sounds in Japanese.
Relation to the Japanese _ni_ ("two") or _nido_ ("two times" or "two degrees") in reference to the two Nidoran evolution lines.
Relation to some classification of animals, "cnidarian", which apparently are all stinging animals (Wikipedia talks mostly about squishy _aquatic_ animals like jellyfish, though, it seems o.o).

... *Shrug.*


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## nza (Dec 22, 2008)

As far as misreporting Sinnoh IDs over Serebii.net is concerned...

- Girafarig's Sinnoh ID is actually 121, not 153.
- Wooper has no Sinnoh ID given, when its actual ID is 117.
- Quagsire has no Sinnoh ID given, when its actual ID is 118.

That's all that I have noticed...

And as far as the spelling of Deoxys in that crappy Prima guide goes, they actually do spell it "Forme."

They continue with that moniker in their more recent PokéDex for DP, as well.


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## Yarnchu (Dec 22, 2008)

Please read what I said...

I said that the FR/LG guide WAS NOT the Prima guide, but rather the official one.


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## nza (Dec 23, 2008)

I'm quite capable of reading and interpreting the things that I read.

The point is Prima used the moniker Forme in its guides while Nintendo did not. Perhaps, for once, a mistake was made on Nintendo's part and not Prima's. Prima's moniker is given more relevance with the official spelling of "Forme" now known with respect to Origin Forme Giratina and that spelling being the same as that which Prima has been using.

If it comes to pass that the Rotom alts are also officially referred to as "Formes" there should undoubtedly be recognition of the fact that either...
A) Nintendo's guides were wrong and Prima's were right.
B) The spelling of Forme has been changed by GF, Prima is justified and Nintendo's guides were right but are now wrong.
C) There are now two different spellings of Form/e and the spelling used is determined by which generation the alt originated in (unlikely as it is). This makes Nintendo right and Prima wrong under the pretense that a ridiculous spelling rule has been adopted.

EDIT: In addition to all of that pokemon.com's Dex uses "Forme." The entire discussion could be resolved if it were known whether that had always been the spelling used there.


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## Pig-serpent (Dec 23, 2008)

In the Nintendo guide for Emerald, it spells it forme.


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